13706 - India’s landmark data privacy law won’t apply to the very cause behind its existence— Aadhaar - The Print

India’s landmark data privacy law won’t apply to the very cause behind its existence— Aadhaar

MANEESH CHHIBBER 18 June, 2018

The draft report says the legislation will ‘not apply to any processing activity that has been completed prior to this law coming into effect’.

New Delhi: The Justice B.N. Srikrishna Committee, constituted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark ‘Right to Privacy’ judgment to come up with a data protection framework, is all set to recommend that the proposed law should not be enforced retrospectively.

Simply put, this means the data collected under Aadhaar would be out of the scope and purview of the proposed law. This recommendation may not find favour with those who have opposed the unique identification system on the ground that the collection and dissemination of Aadhaar data leaves citizens vulnerable.

In its draft report, accessed exclusively by ThePrint, the committee headed by the former Supreme Court judge has concluded that, in the interest of “effective enforcement and fairness to data fiduciaries”, the first-of-its-kind data protection law will “not apply to any processing activity that has been completed prior to this law coming into effect”.

Not only this, the draft report also talks of giving adequate time to data fiduciaries (to whom data is entrusted) to ensure seamless implementation of the new law. This, it says, is needed since the data protection law would be a new legislation and require the creation of a new regulatory framework.

Sources told ThePrint that the committee was scheduled to meet later in the day Monday, where a decision will be taken on whether this report is final or requires further deliberation.

Some acts that the panel wants listed as crimes include obtaining, transfer, disclosure and sale of personal and sensitive data if it causes harm to the person whose data it is (data principal), and re-identification and processing of previously de-identified personal data.

The draft report recommends punishment for “intentional or reckless behaviour” that leads to the crimes, which it wants to be made cognisable and non-bailable. In case the crime has been committed by a company or body corporate, including government departments, the responsibility would lie with the person in charge of conducting the company’s business or the head of a government department.

It wants compensation to be paid to data principals in case any harm is caused to them for infringement.

But, in a move that is certain to rile activists working for stringent privacy and data protection laws, the committee’s draft report absolves the in-charge of all responsibility if he or she shows that the crime was committed without his/her knowledge or that all reasonable efforts had been taken to prevent the crime from being committed.

Other significant recommendations include:

• All cross-border transfer of personal data to be done only through proper contracts, with the sender being liable for any leak or harm caused to such data.
• Personal data deemed ‘critical’ can’t be taken outside India. Critical personal data will include all data necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy and the nation-state.
• The report makes it clear that this data would include Aadhaar number, genetic data, biometric data and health data.
• The differentiation between critical and non-critical personal data, the draft report says, will lead to effective law enforcement, curb foreign surveillance, avert vulnerabilities to the optic cable network, and help in building a robust artificial intelligence ecosystem.
• There will be an independent regulatory body called the data protection authority (DPA), whose functions will include monitoring and enforcement of the proposed law as well as investigation and grievance-handling.
• All data collectors would have to get registered with the DPA.
• The DPA’s powers would include issuing warnings and reprimands, and ordering data fiduciaries to suspend work or collection of data, if found violating the law.
• There will be a ‘data ombudsman’ to adjudicate complaints between data principals and data fiduciaries. Appeals against orders of the data ombudsman will be made to an appellate tribunal. The Supreme Court will hear appeals against orders of this appellate tribunal.
• Consent will be required to collect any kind of personal data. Such consent will be invalid if not based on informed choice that is specific, clear and capable of being withdrawn.
• For sensitive personal data, the consent will also have to be explicit.
• There will be a fiduciary relationship between the “data subject” and “data controller”.

Right to be forgotten:

The draft report allows data principals to approach the data ombudsman with requests for the right to be forgotten, which will be granted on the basis of criteria laid out in the draft law.

However, the right to be forgotten will not be available if data ombudsman feels such a request interferes with the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, and/or right to information of any other citizen.

 What is Justice Srikrishna committee?

The Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India was set up on 31 July 2017 to examine issues related to data protection, recommend methods to address them, and draft a data protection law.

It released a white paper on 27 November 2017.

Thereafter, it held several rounds of meetings with stakeholders, as well as four regional conferences.

However, the white paper itself came under attack from several quarters, with former Supreme Court judge M. Jagannadha Rao writing to the panel that the document referred to collection of data but “not to the boundaries of the right to collection of data which is the essence of the SC judgment”.

Earlier this month, some lawyers and privacy rights activists made public a draft model law on privacy and data protection.

12451 - Aadhaar Good For Citizens, But Can Be Misused: Michael Chertoff, Former Secretary, Department Of Homeland Security, USA -Business World

Aadhaar Good For Citizens, But Can Be Misused: Michael Chertoff, Former Secretary, Department Of Homeland Security, USA

In an exclusive interview with BW Businessworld, Secretary Chertoff talks about the possibility of Aadhaar’s misuse. This part of the interview has been explored in the form of a story below. Can Aadhaar really be misused?

The debate has been long drawn and discussed among intellectuals, government officials, media and the people of India. The question is, can Aadhaar Card be misused? “No”, says Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communications & Information Technology, Government of India. The minister has asserted in the past that “Aadhaar is completely safe, secure and robust”.

Michael Chertoff, Former United States Secretary of Department of Homeland Security agrees, "Aadhaar Card cannot really be misused but the information on the card can be”. It is worth noting here that Secretary Chertoff, who was at the helm of affairs during the Bush and earlier part of Obama administration raises a concern on the handling of information incurred via an Aadhaar card.

Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Indian Member of Parliament and a critique of Aadhaar, wrote this essay sometime back. Here is a quote from the essay:

“Aadhaar involves collection of a large amount of people’s data and centralization of this data in their databases. Predictably, real issues of privacy arise, in a country like ours, where privacy laws are not robust and the issue itself not fully or adequately debated. The privacy issue is even more dangerous given the track record of Governments and bureaucrats in India. As the New York Times wrote “Unsurprisingly, some people see the idea of a centralized identity database as a dystopian nightmare. Privacy advocates contend that the government will use it to track citizens, a serious concern in a country where the government carries out extensive wiretapping and surveillance.”

Mr. Chandrashekhar raises the right concern. Of course, privacy is an issue in a country like India where the privacy laws are not robust. The government, by asking several kinds of information from the citizens via Aadhaar and entering it into a central database is indeed frightful. Imagine, every piece of information about anyone in the country is available in a single go. Of course it is a handy tool to check illegal and terrorist activities but it is also an optimal tool to track people for benefits best fitting the rulers-in-charge.

Reminds me of a concept shared by Thomas Hobbes, famous 16th century English philosopher who talked about an overarching government called the Leviathan. The Leviathan has full information of its citizens and in turn, full control over them. While Thomas Hobbes calls himself a patron of the Leviathan, many philosophers after him criticize the extensive authority Hobbes gives to the rulers. “Hobbes is often criticised for curbing our civil liberties and inalienable rights by depriving us of them in favour of the absolute sovereign. His absolute system of governance is sometimes believed to be incompatible with any liberal society whatsoever”, says Matthew Machowski, Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London and defence and aviation analyst at the UK Houses of parliament.

Using the above in context with Aadhaar, it is apparently clear that a government which has all the information about its citizens develops into an absolute sovereign which can, according to Machowski, infringe the civil liberties and rights of a citizen living in a liberal society.

In a state like India, where Aadhaar forms an identity to many people living in the rural parts of the country, it also brings an iota of threat to the privacy and security of many people. Michael Chertoff, in the above video, discussed at length on the possibility of misuse (or not?) of Aadhaar.

11421 - Aadhaar: The fine balance between identity and anonymity - Live Mint

Last Modified: Wed, May 17 2017. 01 31 AM IST

Aadhaar: The fine balance between identity and anonymity

With mechanisms such as Aadhaar, a balance needs to be drawn between the need for social identity on the one hand, and the very human right to personal privacy

The opposition to the widespread adoption of Aadhaar has, of late, become increasingly vocal. Photo: Hindustan Times

The evolutionary success of Homo sapiens is quite inexplicable. There is very little to distinguish us from the other species who inhabit the planet—in fact our evolutionary ancestors were lower down the food chain than hyenas. Yet, somehow, over the course of millennia, we’ve managed to become the most powerful species on the planet.

In his latest book, Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari puts forward an unusual theory to explain this. Harari argues that the one thing that distinguishes us from apes is our ability to believe in myths—notions like religion and money that are completely made up—in pursuit of which we are willing to make tremendous personal sacrifices. One such myth is the concept of the nation-state. Citizens believe in the notion of nationality and take upon themselves the common identity that a nation-state provides. This belief encourages them to act in concert with other citizens to achieve national goals—even if doing so comes at a personal cost. As a result, nations achieve far more than a single family or even an entire tribe could hope to accomplish. No other animal has the concept of myth-making and hence none can match the accomplishments of humankind.

While there are many elements that make up the myth of nationhood, one of the most prominent among these is identity. It is the concept that establishes the relationship between the individual and the state and allows us to perform our social responsibilities and lay claim to our legal rights. It offers us the means to avail of government facilities and participate in commercial dealings. More importantly, it ensures that the services to which we are entitled actually get to us and are not diverted to someone else. Given the complexity of modern society, reliable identity is critical to our daily existence. The alternative—complete anonymity—is clearly undesirable as it does damage to the myth of the nation-state.

All nation-states have mechanisms to confer identity—from citizenship records that list births and deaths to government registers that contain details of people entitled to various benefits and services. Increasingly, governments around the world are coming around to believe in the need for standardization of national identity. Currently, over 80 nation-states provide some form of national identification number or card to their citizens and even though they were all originally deployed by the government, these forms of identity are more often than not used in all transactions, be they with private parties or with the government.

Aadhaar is India’s mechanism to provide its citizens with a non-repudiable identity. Once it has been rolled out completely, the stated hope is that vast swathes of the population that have, till now, existed outside the mainstream will be able to avail of services and benefits that are currently denied to them for want of identification.

The opposition to the widespread adoption of Aadhaar has, of late, become increasingly vocal. The fear being expressed is that Aadhaar poses a grave risk to personal privacy and that no matter what the benefits may be, its continued proliferation is not worth the potential harm that it could cause. Opponents of the scheme stand against the very concept of a state-conferred identity, preferring anonymity over having to part with their biometrics.

It is important to recognize that identity and anonymity sit at two ends of the same spectrum. As much as the opponents of the national identity scheme might prefer a life of complete anonymity over the risk of State surveillance, if all of us live and work without any form of reliable identity, society would crumble into chaos in very short order. Equally, as much as the government needs to be able to identify its citizens in order for them to play a part in the grand mission of the nation, it must afford them the opportunity to retain their personal privacy.

Neither extreme is acceptable. A balance needs to be drawn between the need for social identity on the one hand, and the very human right to personal privacy.

In my view, this can only be achieved by enacting a privacy law that recognizes the right of the individual to keep certain aspects of their lives private (from both the State as well as other citizens), but which, at the same time, ensures that everyone has the ability to use a non-repudiable, tamper-proof identity in order to be able to function optimally in society. Where any harm is suffered by the individual on account of any violation of his right to personal privacy, this law must prescribe strict punishment for the perpetrator. After all, if we want to preserve and enhance the myth of the nation-state, we would do well to preserve the operational functionality of one of its cornerstones.

Rahul Matthan is a partner at Trilegal. Ex Machina is a column on technology, law and everything in between.

His Twitter handle is @matthan.

Rahul Matthan

9639 - Aadhaar Bill: Why did the Congress take so long to wake up to the need for a strong privacy law? - Scroll.In

Aadhaar Bill: Why did the Congress take so long to wake up to the need for a strong privacy law?

As India goes digital, the Centre must start a debate on privacy and evolve the legal framework for it.

Mar 22, 2016 · 11:30 am  

Rajeev Chandrasekhar

Last week, Parliament passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. The passage of the law aimed at creating legislative backing belatedly for a programme that has spent thousands of crores without debate or scrutiny, has predictably sparked debates – about non-citizens availing of public benefits and subsidies and the other important issue of privacy. Given the National Democratic Alliance government’s focus on governance efficiency and execution, I have no doubt that Aadhaar, in its new avatar as a subsidy delivery platform, will benefit our country greatly – it will plug leakages and improve the quality of life of our citizens.

Ironically, political parties like the Congress, which conceived of Aadhaar in its original form, and the Left, which remained silent through its growth backed by thousands of crores of taxpayers money, have woken up belatedly to this debate on individual privacy rights.

The complete disregard of the call for privacy protections from various quarters by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and the architects of Aadhaar was what caused it to land in the Supreme Court. Having been closely involved in the debate on Aadhaar and privacy, both as a legislator and an impleading petitioner in the Aadhaar matter in the Supreme Court, I can attest to the fact that the NDA Aadhaar is very different from the UPA Aadhaar in many ways – specifically on the issue of privacy rights – starting with the acknowledgement by the government that privacy is a fundamental right. This is reflected in the NDA’s Aadhaar Bill 2016, with its substantively expanded sections on privacy and protection of information.

Digital privacy for Digital India

This significant progress in privacy around Aadhaar has been welcomed by many – and in a case of heavy irony – including those who paid short shrift to this aspect in the last five years as Aadhaar was being rolled out. Ironic, because my friend Nandan Nilekani (the former head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which manages the project) only in September last year, in an op-ed in The Indian Express (to which I wrote a counter), tried making a case that no privacy protection was required because the UPA Aadhaar with its supposedly “federated architecture”, ensured “privacy by design”, and that the manner in which the system collated and stored data of citizens “hardly qualifies as a violation of their right to privacy”. Nilekani used this to question the Supreme Court’s interim order that called for the limited use of Aadhaar due to privacy concerns. From that position to marking a new one on March 9, Nilekani has welcomed the privacy provisions in the NDA’s Aadhaar bill and termed it as “unprecedented level for Indian law”.

Whilst I agree with Nilekani’s welcoming of the NDA Aadhaar Bill’s privacy provisions as a significant step from his original discourse, I am afraid that his position remains as it has been throughout the Aadhaar debate – behind the curve on both the architecture and privacy aspects of Aadhaar. Because the reality is that while the NDA’s Aadhaar bill has made big strides on privacy, there are still some ways to travel before digital privacy is a reality for consumers in India.

Need for a privacy law

The Aadhaar built by the UPA was violative of the Citizenship Act, 1955, as the database did not even identify whether a person who was enrolling was a citizen or not. This allowed illegal migrants and non-citizens to enrol with Aadhaar and avail of public money and subsidies. To its credit, the NDA, which had inherited a poorly-conceived Aadhaar, did exceedingly well to convert what was being pushed as a flawed national identification programme into a limited programme that will exclusively deliver subsidies, benefits and services to those who enrol.

This, however, as I’d mentioned in my speech in Parliament, makes Aadhaar only useful if it works alongside many other databases for schemes such as Jan Dhan Yojana, LPG, Mobile and BPL. Since these databases are not covered under the privacy clauses of Aadhaar, a separate robust, overarching privacy legislation will be required to bring all allied government databases into its ambit.

Further, as I’d stated in Parliament, the inherent dangers arising from the centralised nature of the Central Identities Data Repository [a government agency that stores and manages data for the Aadhaar project] under Aadhaar cannot be ignored. A centralised database is inherently less secure and easy to break into. In the past, the government has mishandled Aadhaar data. In 2013, the Maharashtra government admitted the loss of personal data of about 3 lakh applicants for Aadhaar cards. Experts recognise the inherent failings of a centralised system – that information systems and databases with a central point of failure are inherently vulnerable because the possibility of failure exists.

IT Act and privacy protections

Further, while the Aadhaar Bill, 2016, offers expanded privacy protections by invoking Section 43A of the IT Act, 2000, there is a need for this to be further bolstered. There is ample evidence in the public domain which points to how easy it is for governments to get personal data out from entities that have no liabilities under any legislation. In a letter to the minister of communications & information technology last year, Ravi Shankar Prasad, I had urged for amendments to the IT Act – these include an expansion of the definition of sensitive personal data under Rule 3 of the sensitive personal data rules; the extension of data protection provisions to government agencies, not for profits and others; correcting the flaws in the drafting of Section 72A; and aligning India’s privacy protection to international standards.

Further, the cyber appellate tribunals meant to be constituted under the IT Act are currently inactive, and their constitution does not equip them with the kind of technical capacity needed to adjudicate these disputes.

Most will agree that these must be acted on as an urgent priority, in order for us to reach an “unprecedented level of protections for privacy”.

The road ahead

I have argued for several years now that as India becomes more digital under prime minister Narendra Modi’s visionary Digital India programme – a corresponding set of consumer rights needs to be developed to protect Digital Indians. Net neutrality, quality of service or QoS, security and privacy are some of what needs to be in the Magna Carta of Digital India. So, as we are evolving our net neutrality legal framework, the government too should start the debate on privacy and evolve the legal framework for it. I was reassured in Parliament during the Aadhaar Bill debate by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the government would look into this need for privacy legislation after the Supreme Court’s decision.

While we await the court to take a view on the issue, the best course of action for the government would be to initiate a multi-stakeholder consultation on the right to privacy, so that the views of various stakeholders, including security agencies, are taken into account while this legislation is being conceived and architected.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar is a Member of Parliament from the Rajya Sabha.

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9443 - The government has introduced a bill on Aadhaar – and it is not good news - Scroll.In

IDENTITY PROJECT

The government has introduced a bill on Aadhaar – and it is not good news

Introduced as a Money Bill, it does not need the approval of the Rajya Sabha.

Anumeha Yadav  · Mar 05, 2016 · 10:30 am

For long, critics have pointed out that Aadhaar – the ambitious Unique Identification project started by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2009 – functions without a legal framework. The project, which aims to assign a biometrics-based number to every resident of India, has been controversial, with activists pointing out the dangers of collecting identification data of residents in a country that lacks a privacy law. So far, the project has been run under an executive order, which means Parliament has no oversight over it.

Finally, it seems the project might get the cover of law.

The government on Thursday introduced the Aadhaar (Target Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016.

But this move has come under criticism.

The bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha as a Money Bill, which means it does not require the approval of the Rajya Sabha, where the Opposition is in the majority. This means the Opposition will be unable to force any amendments to the proposed legislation. Simultaneously, a previous bill, introduced in 2010, scrutinised by a standing committee, was withdrawn.

Even before the Lok Sabha debates the new bill, it has come under sharp scrutiny. 

Three questions are being asked by Opposition legislators and legal experts:

One, how justified is the move to introduce legislation on Aadhaar in the form of a Money Bill? Is this a ploy by the government to bypass the Upper House where it lacks a majority?

Two, does the bill address concerns over privacy?

Three, does the bill enable the government to make Aadhaar mandatory, overriding an order of the Supreme Court?

Debate over Money Bill

According to PRS Legislative Research, for a bill to be considered a Money Bill, it must contain provisions related only to taxation, borrowing of money by the government, expenditure from or receipt to the Consolidated Fund of India, and matters incidental to such taxation, expenditure and related subjects.

The government has justified the move to introduce Aadhaar as a Money Bill, citing its significance to the delivery of welfare subsidies. The bill provides that the government may make the Aadhaar number a prerequisite for receiving any “subsidies, benefits, or services” on which expenditure is from the Consolidated Fund of India.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has argued that since the monetary allocations for government subsidy schemes will be disbursed from the Consolidated Fund of India, the Aadhaar bill can be termed a Money Bill.

But Opposition leaders are unconvinced.

In an email response to Scroll.in, Lok Sabha MP Tathagata Satpathy of the Biju Janta Dal questioned the government’s argument. “There are instances of several previous legislations, brought in through the normal process, that draw from the same fund [Consolidated Fund of India]. I wonder why this bill is being treated differently,” he said.

Satpathy added that the government was circumventing the Rajya Sabha. “This is a dangerous precedent to set because, in days to come, it will enable the government to do the same for other Bills too.”

Left members of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha objected to the bill too. “By no stretch of imagination can the Aadhaar Bill be termed a Money Bill,” said Brinda Karat, a Rajya Sabha member of Parliament from the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “It is because the government expects questions in the Rajya Sabha on it that they want to bypass the House altogether… The Speaker has a specific responsibility to prevent misuse of the clause which gives her the final say in such decisions and do what is in the interests of democracy.”

Independent Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar, however, said if the preamble of the Aadhaar Bill was amended – making it conditional for Aadhaar to be used alongside databases such as the Below Poverty Line database – then it could qualify as a Money Bill.

The final decision over whether or not Aadhaar is a Money Bill rests with the Lok Sabha Speaker, Sumitra Mahajan.

Privacy concerns

Biometrics collected under Aadhaar include the scan of all fingerprints, face, and the iris of both eyes. The demographic information includes name, date of birth, gender, residential address. 

India does not have a comprehensive law on privacy. In the absence of this, legal experts and academics say, making Aadhaar mandatory has serious implications for the misuse of personal information and surveillance by the State.

While the government has said that the biometric information of those enrolled under Aadhaar will be safeguarded as per sections of the Information Technology Act, 2000, technology law experts say the adjudicatory system for disclosure of sensitive personal data under the IT Act has structural flaws and is not functional.

“Initial complaints for disclosure of sensitive personal data go to an adjudicating officer who is usually the IT Secretary of the state government and may not be trained in law,” said a technology lawyer. “There is no court infrastructure and no permanent seat for such cases. The appellate body, the Cyber Appellate Tribunal has not been made operational in the last three years. Hence, the civil remedies offered (in Aadhaar Bill) are at best illusionary and unenforceable.”

Section 33 of the Aadhaar Bill contains provisions for interception of Aadhaar’s demographic and core biometrics data, which will not be open to independent scrutiny. Section 33(2) permits disclosure pursuant to directions of a joint secretary in “the interest of national security,” but the phrase “national security” is undefined in the present Bill, or the General Clauses Act.

Further, the Bill contains no provisions for independent oversight, limitations on continuous surveillance, or notice to the person who is surveilled once the surveillance ceases.

Chinamayi Arun, who is executive director, Centre for Communication Governance at the National Law University Delhi said that the Bill provides very easy access to citizen information on the database to law enforcement agencies, without sufficient transparency or accountability. “It does not provide strict liability in case of a breach of information,” she said.

Legal scholar Usha Ramanathan pointed out that the Bill lacks provisions on notice to a person in case of breach of information, in case of third party use of data, or change in purpose of use of data – which were among provisions recommended by the Justice Shah Committee on Privacy in 2012 on an earlier Bill on the same Unique Identification project.

Expanding the scope of Aadhaar

While the government has stated that the aim of the Bill is to streamline government subsidies, legal experts say the phrasing in Section 7 provides for an ambit wider than government subsidies, and includes any benefits and services charged on the Consolidated Fund of India.

“The Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government may, for the purpose of establishing identity of an individual as a condition for receipt of a subsidy, benefit or service for which the expenditure is incurred from, or the receipt therefrom forms part of, the Consolidated Fund of India..”

Since the beginning of the programme in 2009, Nandan Nilekani, who led the Unique India Development Authority of India under the previous United Progressive Alliance government, had maintained that Aadhaar is voluntary. But to expand enrolment under the scheme, the United Progressive Alliance government, as well as the Modi government, pushed state governments to ask residents to produce Aadhaar cards to access various social schemes, to open bank accounts, to vote, to register a marriage, or even adopt a child.

A number of public interest writ petitions were filed in the Supreme Court against the coercive use of Aadhaar.

Between September 2013 and March 2015, the Supreme Court passed three orders saying the government cannot make Aadhaar mandatory and no one should be deprived of a public benefit or service for not possessing an Aadhaar number. Later, in October last year, it allowed the voluntary use of Aadhaar in seven specific schemes. The government has challenged the order.

A senior official in the cabinet secretariat overseeing the linking of Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts of beneficiaries under the direct benefits transfer scheme said: “The Supreme Court had allowed only its voluntary use in 6-7 schemes, but if everyone exercises the voluntary option, it defeats the purpose of the programme, and the new Bill will address this.”

Economist Jean Drèze, who had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court over the government seeking to make Aadhaar mandatory for MNREGA workers, said the introduction of the Bill has at least ended the pretence that Aadhaar is voluntary.

“The Aadhaar project was sold to the public as a voluntary facility,” said Drèze. “The Supreme Court sensibly ruled that this would preclude making Aadhaar compulsory for any basic services. The government has reappropriated that power under the Aadhaar Bill, ending the pretence that Aadhaar is voluntary.”

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